Oxallis is the scourge of every gardener in Northern California. Every fall I promise myself I will get out and pull it up as soon as the first clover shaped sprouts appear or put down ugly black plastic or news paper for mulch. I do a good job of weeding and mulching for a while, until something always happens like; rain, the flu or the ennui of winter then this yellow plague gets ahead of me.
For every flower there is a bulb growing underground sucking up nutrients that my tomatoes or lettuces will soon need. Arrrgggg I howl. Sure I could leave them however, in late July oxalis just suddenly dies off leaving me nothing but a patches of dry, dirty-yellow straw all over my yard.
There are some good things to say about sour grass, as I use to called it when I was a kid I would pick it and suck the stems for its puckrey sour juice. It is pretty and bright in the dark of winter. So lovely, in fact, that we use to let it grow until Easter to create a lot of fun and pretty hiding places for eggs.
I grew up in snow country which made outdoor egg hunts rare if not impossible, so they always seemed magical. Not like the ugly magic trick that these *&%# flowers play by come up every year when I didn’t even plant them!
This year I proclaimed “if I you can’t beat it I might as well enjoy it” and went out and photographed my sour grass. crop. Then went to town pulling up that devilish weed long before Easter.
Light Words 
Oh, I loved both your photo and your words. You brought back memories of my childhood sucking on sour grass, I remember holding poppies up under each other’s chins and if it looked golden, that meant the person liked butter!!! Where do kids get these things?
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Now I never heard about poppies under the chin. I wonder what other childhood flower lore there is? any one else have a story?
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Carol, it grows from bulbs? I had no idea. And sour grass, what a great name for it. I had never heard that. I take it our wood sorrel is Cape Sorrel or an invasive from South Africa? But it is pretty. I don’t garden, so I just enjoy the yellow flowers.
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I can’t believe the passionthat came up around oxalis. be glad you don’t “get to deal with it”.
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Oxalis is so easy to pull out compared to these calla lily bulbs, which I think are arum lily. They are total weeds and take over the small garden I have. They do not bloom as calla lilies, but instead have these rather ugly bulbous things. Do you know what I am talking about?
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My condolences, sorry about those lilies. I’ll look them up in my new Western Garden Book. I think I’ve seen a lot of snails on the ones in my yard.
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